According to my Meyers-Briggs and my astrology report, I should have been a musician. I never did learn an instrument well enough to pull that off. I can play a little bit of guitar, a little bit of piano but that’s the extent of it unless you count my shower concerts. My favorite form of expression is visual.. digital remixing of graphics. Sometimes I incorporate music too. I’ll have lots of different graphics and take the parts of them I want to use and create something completely different. I’m constructing an image in the same way a DJ remixes a song. I borrow a little bit from here and there. I did it with the header image of this post. Another example:

Artists are really just instruments themselves. Life has singers and dancers and producers and technicians. All these moving parts that come together to create a masterpiece.

“The whole is greater than the sum of it’s parts.” -Aristotle

Life is like a love song… there are moving parts…

Chorus: the part of a song or poem that is repeated following each verse. There are various patterns of repeat. In the song of life our thoughts are the chorus.

Verse: roughly corresponds to a poetic stanza because it consists of rhyming lyrics most often with an AABB or ABAB rhyme scheme. In the song of life, the verse is a message from the higher self.

Bridge: connects the verse and the chorus. It is a device that is used to break up the repetitive pattern of the song and keep the listener’s attention (be in the present moment). In a bridge, the pattern of the words and music change. In the song of life, the bridge represents the people who help you connect with the message and take control of your thoughts. They focus their energy on sharing insights with the hope that the message resonates and helps others break out of their unconscious patterns

Call & Response the response. It is like there are two people having a conversation. Someone calls out, someone responds. If the call is in a major key, the response is in a minor key and vice versa. In the song of life, the call and response is the Divine Masculine and Divine Feminine energies calling out to one another, longing for reconciliation, for balance. Not only a balance between men and women. More importantly, a balance of the feminine and masculine energies within each of us as individuals. Here is a good example of a call and response:

Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah is the most covered song in the history of song covers. I understand why. It touches the core of my soul. He is expressing something deeply meaningful. Words alone fail to properly describe what he is actually getting at. “It goes like this the 4th, the 5th, the MINOR fall the MAJOR lift” -that is a description of a coda. This is my favorite Hallelujah cover… The vocals are just the essence of a female. One woman and all women. A Goddess energy is singing this song:

When I realized how vital artistic expression is for my mental health, I started taking it so seriously. I had suppressed it for 3 years. I honestly thought that I had to in order to fully dedicate myself to Motherhood. I did it without realizing the cost… that my little boy was only getting a shell of a person. Now I know that I can be both. I must be both. I can’t teach him that he can be anything he wants while denying myself something so necessary. It’s more than necessary. It is vital.

I was giving my son a front row seat to my misery.There is an enormous price paid to take that seat and the ticket is usually non refundable. His choices don’t yet exist outside of my influence and control. The relief I feel for realizing it is short lived and replaced with a sadness only a mother can know. I think about others who are in the same position in life I found myself in. If you have not yet found something that is just for you, FIND IT. It can be anything as long as it is something that you love, something that you could do without ever having to earn a penny. Experience is priceless.

“We aren’t meant to be perfect. We are meant to be whole.” -Jane Fonda